The Accidental President(s)

You are on a mission if you decide to accept it. If you are caught or killed, well, tough noogies pilgrim, this is American politics. Put on your big boy pants. 

I submit that Mission Impossible never had a less likely plot, yet here we are. We've contended with defensive postures in our politics three times in a row now. Maybe four, maybe 10. Let's start spelling it like it is. Realpolitik. 

I submit we've had a string of them, not a chosen path as it turned out, more of an inevitability. After two or three, or four, or five, one would think we would learn our lesson. 

It's not just a job; it's a wringer. Sometimes, things come out in the wash; sometimes, the water is so filthy no one wants to reach for the stopper. 

It must be, I postulate; where fools fear to tread, we sacrifice our liberty.

Two Terms 

Cleveland, he was there twice. Fit for the job, in someone's opinion obviously, but hampered by the politics of the times, confrontational and challenging. The pre-war and post-war idioms and patterns of the civil ware are fresh in the concrete of our history.  Much has changed, but much has remained the same. How could it be otherwise? 

Let's consider another two terms: honor, and integrity. 

Please Google them yourself; my whitespace fills all on its own; help a little; also fill in the whitespace in your thoughts.  That's what we do here. 

I'll offer a short definition: 

integrity: deserving of honor. 

These, too, were honorable men by their measure. They had their own book, which looks much like the one the presidents swore over, but it's more open to interpretation.  

Second Glances 

One could argue this is symptomatic of non-consecutive presidencies, but as a model, it's a sparsely populated data set.  Further analysis might reveal that some degree of candidate-rebound social reaction was behind the pathology; one bad decision made for good reasons by some analysis that returns faulty and misguided results, and leads to the next cause-and-effect loop, which recurs apparently until someone stumbles on a workable solution to the events that generated the milieu. 

Complicating our prescience, the inadequately recalled history and constant spin coupled with rearview-mirror thinking, in series.

Yet, anyone who re-marries someone they divorced experiences it, and we all recognize it. From afar. 

Looking back, it seems foolish.

The Second Coming

The pulse of the nation is elevated, similarly the blood pressure. He'll be back; in fact, he is coming back soon. There are paths ahead, laid down by pathfinders using self-justified rule books and dispositions. All the angst and fear of the past in a series of decisions past piled up, and imprinted on the path ahead of the president and us.

Soft concrete now. 

Soon, the revenant. Since that path is un-walkable, it's concrete overshoes for a lame duck. It was inevitable. 

What do we do now?

A Different Kind of Truth

Like many of you, I watch traffiic at the lights, and use the blinker. Also, I keep track of what you are doing. You know who you are; you are why we can't have nice things. 

I once courted a woman who insisted I compose an appropriate tribute in strict sonnet format, just for fun.  I'm a sport. But you're not her (I think she's dead.)

How do I rate thee? In non-sonnet format.

Inside

We're talking about truth, not in sonnet format, because who could tell the truth in a sonnet? Ok, I can allow that beauty exists, but allow me the suspension of belief. 

In the news, the US is for sure going to invade Panama, and it wouldn't take much to make them look like they deserve it. Look at what Trump can do for Trump, for example. 

One could argue that I'm a fool to consider a quest for truth in this melted mirror of reality we wake up to every day. 

I abhor that comment, but allowing for beauty begets the existence of evil. I mentioned Trump twice now. You and I read the news and make of it what we will, and because it's all talk, we don't allow it to keep the kids up at night by showing concern or writing about it, though for different reasons. 

So, we allow for a different kind of truth.`

Outside

I wonder, from the outside, how all this must appear. Is this some gambit or ploy, or capitalist plot to enslave the motherland, or something?  

It is one of those occasions where mathematics fails, and intuition provides no guide. Madness, of a man grown  red-in-the-face from holding his breath over his own self-deception. 

Outside of the man, he must see a different kind of truth. A projected truth that, though muted and elusive, is the truth as envisioned. Footsteps in cement lead ahead, nonetheless, to more footsteps in cement.  Stopping will set the cement.

All Around the Place

It's just Christmas, and the other holidays.  The needles start to fall off the tree almost immediately, and most people don't mess with a real tree. In a large city,  disposal is an issue. 

The metaphors get so thick I can barely type fast enough to keep ahead of them and enforce a reasonable edit.

So I won't

Rotting in Mar A Lago

I've posted in a precis before; the probability of precursory shared experience to some extent. Maybe read Hamlet, if. But that would not indicate my intention here; it's the color of the room wallpaper we share with our warmed nog. 

(I don't prefer egg-nog; metaphors, precursors, propensities, check.)

The raisins we're etre-ing around this virtual nog-fueled cracker barrel is to discuss the apple barrel. Let's look at this from a problem-solving viewpoint, from the bottom up.

What do you get when you feed a constant version of The Torturer's Apprentice and fail  to meet the needs of the American people?  We are, here in America, led around by our small screens. They've convinced us of so many things that might be true. Primary among the true-ism is that under Capitalism, man exploits man; under Socialism, man exploits man. Something like that. This malaise eats at the fruits of American democracy, first equality in all its forms, then in myopia to see only what we want to believe.

We got that.

The Low-Bottom

I've never bobbed for them or even seen an apple in a barrel. Moisture, pressure, and time may work on the contents, and results are somewhat predictable. In our official construction, we could examine institutions, pretend we were discussing politicians and business people, and extend the content to entire populations if we wish. There is always free will and opportunity in the way of complete justice, from some viewpoint. 

The population also applies in our hypothetical construction; classes of apples would share life experiences with their neighbors, perhaps in significant numbers.  That's a lot to consider all at once, and it is early. 

But let's assume we're considering society and use privilege, wealth, and influence to define our barrel's measure. 

This is where society meets the test of whether it is worthy of being called a human civilization in all the ways mentioned above.Judgment may often confirm our suspicions about bad apples and their color or form. We may deduce some barrels are just bad. 

We believe all apples have worth and value. It has been documented and ratified. We believe.

The High Lorem

In Hebrew: beautiful, gifted, fortunate. Whereas Latin, the language no one ever speaks, so nebulous and actively defined by cloistered overuse for which at its finest, analysis can defy singular interpretation, is also helpful at times in our metaphor. I thank my high school prep for the knowledge base, but not so much the lesson in using a slide rule. 

There's nothing magical about slide rules; all the answers are right there. Two times four, move the center slide and position the indicating reticle. They fell out of the semantics before men walked on the moon. It's still available if you hurry. Eight, right?

I mention it as we consider the top of our barrel. It's easy to make the right choice here; the slide rule is not required, just access. Access one of the barrel-topper's favorite words. 

The people demand 'X,' and access to 'X' is easy to say. You have access to everything you need in life as a result. Healthcare, education, employment, marriage, and retirement are included. You have as much of a shot as anyone else in the barrel. 

Give or take an apple class. 

Lorem ipsum, depending on the dice. Sorry, access to the dice.

The Silent Mediaocrity

First thing, I appologice for the usage. I'm trying to make a point about the middle of our barrel, the media's place, and the net effect of a media that lives on the top of the barrel and panders to the middle. 

We've got a case of unlimited applicability again, so sorry about that, too, but this could also be a description of the established role of politicians and officials as well. 

The mean sways the curve in populations and politics. The middle of any one thing may diverge, but that is the the job of policical consultants and campaign chairs. It's beige here, named after a flower, the Axelrod : which produces no fruit, flower, or essence without money; cascades of money sometimes. Sometimes to no avail. The botany is rooted even in the worst of droughts.

The bottom? That's not their neighborhood. 

I'll pause and let you consider what has been said and wrap up in a bit.

The Race to Failure

Gentlemen, and all the president-elect's men and the rest of the cabinet nominees, start your engines. They only way to win this race is to start before it begins, just a couple laps, quick like, a preview one might say. That wouldn't be cheating, after all, the president elect is over the day he dares touch that bible and say those words.

Vice President -elect Musk is on the hill, pushing his weight and his money around while he still can, and while Ol' Yellow Stain lets him, and until they disagree, or these two shoot each other. Can I say that? I'm not pushing the narrative, this is reality.

The Speaker, same race track, totally different engine. He's looking at the past few months like it happened to someone else, but it didn't. That white smoke rumor, just a rumor, a rumor with legs and a place to sleep.

The markets feel it too. No one dares cough. The mob calls this respect. 

The Past

It's been said, the past is prelude. Never could that gel more perfectly in our consciousness than now.  It's almost proverbial, as is the variety and scope of escape regimens. The Teflon Donald, nothing ever sticks. He'll sue you for suing him and use the money from the last lawsuit to beat your finances to death.  Mr Cohen was recounting on the media yesterday the exact mechanisms employed against perceived enemies. That was his day job and his ToDo list. 

Astounding and frightening, and I'm talking about Mr Cohen. Where are we that we allow people like this to prosper? That's rhetorical; I don't want to interrupt your thought. 

Speaking of evil, evil prospering is what triggers the regime now. But it's always been a race. A race to failure.

In the air, my memory strains to recall Candide and the tragedy and sting of reality in a prism.

The Present

Prelude is what we live everyday, and he's not just directing traffic from the bunker in Mar A Lago.  We have another month of this edge of the guillotine blade existence, then the blade falls for real. No one is willing to stick their neck out.

JD Vance has already been be-headed, it seems. Second in line to the back row. How many Scaramuccis was that?

The Speaker, I've already forgotten his name, the guy from Louisiana? " 'Im do. "

Mitch, has caught another ride, and he'll take that home and pay for the gas happily. 

DEI is on the list of initiatives getting the side-eye from Elon and Ramalamadingdong. Both of them, clearly immigrants.

If it makes no sense, that's probably what they are going for. 

A Half-Life Presidency

We've all heard the Yogi-isms, it's not over until the fat lady sings. Some would infer that if you shoot the fat lady, the opera goes on.  I love this metaphor.

Here we are, soon to watch the libretto play on. In Washington DC, there will be worm-sign the likes even God has never seen before. Another inauguration, and in our collective memories we hear 'Don't Stop' and 'Devil with a Blue Dress' and 'Money' and 'Hail to the Chief' in constant replay, like a loop of tape, cut with purpose by some vandal to shorten our collective memory.

Still, that's the White House.  Half of our lives have been lies and men of low character. 

If this is your path, expect to spend half your life trying to cover it up.

Busted or Bust

It started with larceny, copping a feel. Small things a boy sees men of low quality get away with every day. When it's your father you mimic, it may tip a personal scale if a boy is not careful.  After a lifetime of it, it grows into a habit. 

One learns to make deals, one assumes, engages in transactions designed to enable the lifestyle and defer or avoid the blame.

Stacked one on top of another, the jealousies and the infidelities pile up in life. Marriages crumble, financial opportunities shrink, and the body count grows. There is no choice now; the future is set, carved into the soul of a child pointed the wrong way and allowed to meander.

If one could count offenses, perhaps a self-assessment could alter the path, but that's not part of the dysfunction.

Paying that piper would be part of the score, and by now, that is a price one only pays with their soul.

Only one way out.

Wrecking the Place

It's impossible to see beyond a singularity; events, histories, and perhaps even information are reassembled into the only possible form in the pressure and heat of that environment. How does one ruin one's own life so effectively that the only way out is through, no matter what it costs? 

A second term starts ending the day it begins. In this game, the only real winning is to steal everything. 

How do you steal a country? Never mind, what would you do with it? Again, seeing beyond the singularity isn't possible.  The heat and pressure push forward, shooting the fat lady again. Truth is maleable, and the only truth accepted is the truth we approve; the rest is spun and crushed in the heat and pressure and is lost.  There's no time to look back anyway, the only way is forward, no matter what. 

Steal America? Wreck it first, and people will beg you to stop the catastrophe.

Fear and Loathing

I am wary to use the phrase, the sematics in your lexicon are unpredictable. Still, I recall, 'Fuck the doomed.' as a quote from President Richard Nixon in a Las Vegas men's room. I'll take that one. 

We're here in the wake of that wave that built momentum in the great flyover expanse, grew and crested in the desert, and splashed and spilled against the great wall of the west.

We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

All things must pass.

The Disunited States of Fear

Chances are when you get up in the morning, there is a moment when your consciousness reaches out to obtain a grip on the day, and you remember in an instant what that day looks like. 

Your wife and your kids are still asleep, and everything seems peaceful. As the man of the house, your soul aches for the challenges ahead to keep them apart, safe, and warm. 

Your life, their life, your job, their well-being, your career, their future hangs now by a thread. A woven thread of lies and half-truths, some too terrible to take seriously, and all shake at your foundations and threaten our way of life. There's no algorithm to sort out what's real and what is a twice-told tale of fear and loathing. The retribution of a small man with a larger ego in control.  An entire nation spurred on by a fool and his cadre of willing fools.

Fear everywhere. The markets, the Middle East, Europe, the Defense Department, the Justice Department -- fear everywhere, disunited fears connected only in the causal relationship to that twisted intellect.

And then there is politics. 

The Loathing of the King

It has been said, these are the ravings of a mad man, don't take it seriously. A madman who is President-elect. Those people need to go to jail, everyone who sought his demise. He won't instruct; he'll hire the willing with the propensity. He made sure they'd swear to anything he lies to; he calls it loyalty. Many call it a lack of character.

DOGE is nothing more than a license to steal for Elon and Mr Ramalamadingdong. How much waste is there in a BFR that costs a billion dollars to light to see if it can make it to orbit? That's the way Elon runs the rocket business. It's only money. When it comes to people, the first thing to go is people. He doesn't care if Twitter is a troll haven; he's a troll. He doesn't care about waste unless it's someone else wasting it. 

Elon became a billionaire on government money. Let's stop that waste. We can't afford Mars when we can't feed schoolchildren. 

This is one of the willing instruments used to control your fear. Your job, wife, kids,  you -- don't matter. You're probably waste. and the King loathes this waste. 

The king hopes to pack every institution with people who won't stop him on his revenge tour; the minions will be busy counting their coups to feed their demons. That's why he hired them.

If Congress lets him get away with it.

Ol' Yellow Stain's War

We're here as the column begins, two vehemently opposed camps, two causes, presumably, and no reason for anyone to be here except one. There is a lot at stake in this game of chicken where one will blink first and take it all. 

The wink is a metaphor for the win. A contrast appropriate here as it may as well be that. A bankroll and media war does not elect the best candidate, either. We're encouraged to disbelieve and misconsider facts we know to be true. We do this for no good reason other than the one mentioned above.

The Ramparts

All along the watchtowers of our nation, bands of leaders of conscience and citizens too. The right thing to do is so more straightforward, no matter what anyone else says. Ask a liar how they remember the lie or if they even try. Donald Trump doesn't try. He has no intention of living up to anything; all that gets in the way will fall under the scythe, a harvest of self-interest and lousy temperament. 

Among them, thirty percent of Americans wait in hope for their salvation.

The Bulwarks

Under attack for years, all the steadfast measures of a civil society disappear beneath our feet, the destruction of the cathedrals of justice and court houses -- hallmarks of our civilization,  a step in the conquest  

Congress, the press, the police, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and key parts of our intelligence network potentially emasculated by willingly led and perhaps easily compromised and controllable minions. 

Education, Social Security, and the roots of our social safety net are sacrificed to side schemes and gambits to keep the masses incensed. Manipulation upon manipulation, designed to make such a mess, in desperation the even DJ Trump looks better. 

God help us.

The Stalwarts

I was reticent to speak for them; I would not be counted among that group. We're not all alike; some of us have a vision, and others have reasons. 

I left this section empty so you could ask who speaks for the stalwarts of all of America. You may ask where are the Republican stalwarts? Patriot is another word that has lost meaning in an alternative-fact world. I did not use it here.

For those who may be, I can speak softly. 

We must take that high ground, where the tree of freedom was planted hundreds of years ago. 

That shining city on a hill, shrouding in mists, need not become a maelstrom of smoke and ash, though that is what has ahold of your attention. 

King for a Day

He's said it himself, we all heard it, just for one day. That was the promise. Technically i think the noun was 'dictator' but, if the duck fits...

It has been nearly a month now and King Donald the First has not yet taken the oath of office, never put that hand on the Bible, never pledged his allegiance to America. Not that the gesture would mean anything to him in any case. 

He's not been knighted or anointed and is not even widely admired, just marginally elected. 

There was no mandate. Not that it would matter. In his mind, it was a landslide, and the Dems just wanted to make him look bad. again.

The day that lasted forever, maybe.

The Invisible Mandate

The news is just in. It was a squeaker. Trump won the election this time at least, that's what the polls indicated the Trump conspiracy probably had a more challenging time cheating this time than last time, though that's a moot point. No one will ever investigate this election. 

Our king-in-chambers is now the king-in-waiting, and he boldly admits how he pulled himself out of all that time, better than Al Capone, he may consider. Al Capone died in prison for tax evasion. Hisoner scoffs at taxes. 

All the people he can pay money to will, by contract, try to keep him out of Dutch with everyone. He pays some of those men a lot of money to tell him what to do. I somehow feel, at some level, it has to be the other way around. No one ever left a well-pointed tool unused. Who holds those strings? 

He is well-schooled and a good gardener. He'll dig wherever the last person to make an impression pointed. What's needed is men with shovels like Hitler had men with shovels. 

There is no mandate, and somehow, he knows he's a lame duck the moment he lies with his hand on that Bible in January. 

He has to get what he can while he still has you scared shiftless.

The Secretary of Self-Defense

We all see the plan. Throw so many bad choices at the fire that it smothers the flames. We've seen 5, maybe 6, real Trump-approved losers get nominated for the highest-appointed offices in the land. In this time of needful change, this indicates a change to loyalty, fealty, fidelity, in deference to a leader who deserves none of it. 

• Secretary of  Defense

• Attorney General

• Director of the FBI

• Director of National Intelligence

• and more

It's not that all of the nominees are that bad, ok, some of them were and are that bad, but everyone is ready to bow on day one, and day one has already started, weeks ago. There is no mandate here; it's just bluster. Can you imagine it? 

These are all measures to seize the reigns of power, and with Hitler's shovelers and generals, he's ready to make some bottomless holes.

The Pretend Presidency 

Astute observers of politics and human nature will recognize the pattern. By His Highness's estimation, this has already been the most extraordinary presidency ever; no one has seen anything like this before. Perhaps that exact thought, no doubt. 

We recall the boasting about the economy that let loose the dogs of capitalism and tax relief for the wealthy; we had an excellent economy, gas was so cheap, and food was cheaper. why you could eat all day for a dollar. In the evenings, Rainbo Brite often would stop by and sing to the children, lulling them to sleep on beds of heather and jasmine. 

And then he was impeached twice and lost the re-election. Old news. Ditto. 

Even before he was sworn in, his faux-hirsuteness was threatening world leaders with mayhem and financial destruction in the form of immediate tariffs, and that was the message to our allies, Mexico and Canada.